


hiroko's dreams

by Eldestmiddle



Series: katsuki family values [2]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Post-Canon, hiroko's backstory, it runs in the family, mari pov, viktuuri is not the focus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-27
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-11 16:43:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10469562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eldestmiddle/pseuds/Eldestmiddle
Summary: well, it's russia.





	

**Author's Note:**

> disclaimer: i know NOTHING ABOUT BALLET OR HOW YOU MIGHT GET INTO A COMPANY OR WHAT THE MARIINSKY IS LIKE. it was chosen because st petersburg and also i wanted to avoid the bolshoi scandals. i fudged a lot. a lot. do not expect accuracy.
> 
> ALSO, i know i have other works i should be working on. i'm sorry. but this hit me in the middle of the night.

When Yuuri announces that he will be moving to Russia to train with Viktor, Hiroko is over the moon.

She intensely questions Viktor at which district he lives in St Petersburg. What is in the surrounding areas? Does he know how to cook any Russian foods? Yuuri knows how to cook but Viktor should try to pull his weight too. Is there a cleaning service ready to make his abandoned flat livable, they’ll be tired by the time they touch down. How is the commute to the rink? It’s unnerving and Mari is as thrown off guard as Viktor is though Toshiya seems rather calm.

Mari later sees Hiroko pull Yuuri aside and beg him to go see the Mariinsky Ballet and Yuuri quietly, intensely promise.

It’s a secret that only she and Viktor aren’t aware of and it hurts to feel like an outsider in her home with her family. It’s no secret that though Hiroko and Toshiya love both their children, Yuuri is definitely a mama’s boy while Mari favors her father. Mari just never thought about the fact that her mother and brother might share things between them that she might not know.

Mari isn’t dramatic so she goes to her father.

Toshiya is relaxing outside, looking at the stars with a pot of genmaicha by his side. He likes to have some quiet time to himself after the hustle of the onsen during the day. Even Hiroko leaves him alone to unwind by himself and only Mari has ever been invited to come sit by him and tell him about her day, even if Mari’s old tales of her wilder days had given him fits of anxiety over her safety. This relaxes Mari as she sits down next to her father and reminds herself that there are things shared here that they had sworn each other to secrecy over too though Toshiya’s had been mostly birthday gifts for his wife.

Toshiya isn’t dramatic either.

“Mom’s really excited about Yuuri going to Russia.”

Toshiya hums contentedly, “Oh, yes.”

They listen to the faint sounds of Hiroko’s Russian Interrogation part 2 in the dining room. No doubt Viktor is trapped there by his dinner bowl of katsudon.

“She wasn’t like this when Yuuri went to Detroit.”

“Well, it is Russia.”

Mari turns to look at Toshiya. “What do you mean it’s Russia? What’s great about Russia?”

Toshiya looks at his daughter in astonishment. “Well, your mother dreamed of going to Russia.”

“ _Mom?!_ ” Mari is incredulous. “Why would mom want to go to _Russia?_ ”

“To dance, of course.”

“What.”

“What?”

Toshiya and Mari stare at each other. Viktor chatters nervously in the background.

“ _Mom danced?!_ ”

“Of course, how did you think she met Minako?”

Completely thrown, Mari frantically digs through her memories to try and remember how Mom might’ve met Minako. Come to think of it, Minako was older than her mother so they wouldn’t have shared classes so the only other way they might’ve really interacted was through club activities which…

“ _Mom danced?!_ ”

Toshiya seems just as shocked as his daughter. Mari tries to compare her soft, round dumpling of a mother with rail-thin Minako. This does not compute.

“Your mother danced very well. She and Minako were the pride of Hasetsu.”

This is starting to sound familiar.

Toshiya seems to know where her thoughts are going because he smiles at her, “I told you your brother was a lot like your mother.”

“Yeah, but mom dancing? She’s not…”

“Well, she ate a lot less katsudon in those days, you know.”

“Just like Yuuri.”

“Yes.”

Mari is shook. She had never thought of her mother in any context but as her mother which is foolish. Surely her mother had been a someone before she married Toshiya and helped run the onsen, now that she really thought of it, but quite frankly, Mari had always thought of her mother as a small town girl.

“What the hell.”

Toshiya digs through his thin billfold and pulls out a slightly wrinkled photo which he passes over to Mari.

There is a teenage Hiroko posed in attitude, staring off camera.

Mari holds the photo up so the porch light illuminates her mother’s form. Toshiya hadn’t been kidding when he had often remarked how alike Yuuri was to Hiroko. It’s almost like looking at an earlier picture of Yuuri with a slightly higher, nipped in waist. In fact, Mari’s almost sure that they have a similar picture of Yuuri in this exact pose.

“Dad, tell me about when Mom danced.”

Of course, it really happened because Minako.

Okukawa Minako is the only remnant of a once wealthy family from Hasetsu’s more prosperous days. Her parents had doted on their only child and daughter. Minako had started out dancing at a local studio with most of the other girls in Hasetsu. You could be excused from school clubs as long as you danced and most of the girls danced casually to show off at recitals and pirouette in gym. Only Minako and Hiroko had been serious about taking it further. When the Okukawas hired a private Russian teacher for their daughter, Minako invited Hiroko to share her lessons. Hiroko’s parents paid a percentage of the tutoring fees but the Okukawas gladly shouldered the majority of the price so that their daughter could dance with her only close friend. The two girls had learned together and competed against each other with a friendly rivalry that their teacher had encouraged. They did well in competitions, enough that some scouts had come by from companies across Japan, even the Tokyo Ballet. However, their tutor had higher aspirations for his ballerinas from the beginning. He worked them hard with high expectations and taught them Russian as well as French. He spoke fondly of his St Petersburg and his days with his company. He recommended his beloved Mariinsky to Minako and, surprisingly, Hiroko as well. Hiroko wasn’t as traditionally formed as a ballerina but the Mariinsky had been making some strides in a more modern direction and Hiroko’s musicality was not to be overlooked. Their teacher had actually contacted the company and sent some tapes, and there was every evidence in the response that the Mariinsky was interested in seeing them both audition. Hiroko and Minako had excitedly made plans to room together and take St Petersburg by a storm with their only _slightly_ accented Russian. They were ready to take their places on top of the world.

“But she never made it to Russia?”

“Ah, no.” Toshiya suddenly looks awkward.

Mari makes the connection quickly. “Are you serious?”

“She never regretted it.” Toshiya reassures his daughter quickly. “She could have left you with my family and gone on to Russia but she said that this must have happened for a reason so she stayed and we got married.”

Mari still feels terrible.

“Mari-chan,” Toshiya hugs his daughter close, “you don’t know what a comfort you were to your mother before Yuuri was born. Even while planning to be a dancer, she had also always planned to be a mother as well. She talked about retiring to have an entire company’s worth of children. She couldn’t give you up. She might’ve not had any children at all if she had gone on to Russia.”

This makes things only a little better.

Toshiya continues. “I felt very guilty as well. Your mother had a future on an international stage. She could’ve been as famous as Minako if not more so. I was going to take over a small onsen. Not even the fanciest one out of the six onsen in town. I loved her but I was resigned to lose her. We took every precaution but when she got pregnant, she said that the gods were keeping her in Hasetsu for a reason, and after she had such trouble with getting pregnant again, she said she knew that must have been the reason. We talked about this and she said that her love for you as a mother outweighed her love of the stage as a dancer. So she stayed in Hasetsu and never went to Russia to dance.”

“That’s why Yuuri…”

“Yes, when we got married, I promised that if any of our children wanted to leave to follow their dreams, they would never want for anything.”

“Yeah, but Yuuri knows.”

“Yes, well, you two got your brains from your mother.”

“Not if I never figured out that mom had been a dancer.” Mari scrubs her hand over her hair as she hands the photograph back to her father.

Toshiya chuckles as he tucks it carefully back into the protective cover. “To be fair, you never danced. Yuuri-chan figured it out after starting lessons with Minako.”

Mari groans into her hands.

“I’m going to bed. I need to digest this.”

“Alright. Sleep well, Mari-chan.”

Mari leaves her father sipping at his now-cold tea and pauses at the dining room from the hallway.

Viktor is frantically stuffing his mouth to stave off more conversation while Yuuri leans sleepily against his fiancé with a snoring Makkachin under his arm. Hiroko bounces up to skip to the kitchen and for the first time, Mari notices how her mother stands upright, how her body might be heavy but her steps are just as light as Yuuri’s. When her mother turns to go through the kitchen entryway, she turns on one foot while the other gracefully sweeps around with a point.

Mari bypasses the bathroom and goes straight to her room. She sits on her bed and thinks of her young mother, immortalized in attitude as she gazes toward Russia.

**Author's Note:**

> actually, i love the fanon going around about footiecaptain!hiroko being an aggressive forward so much but... minako-senpai...  
> and russia...  
> so this is not my heartcanon but it's a thing i've thought about.


End file.
